Gordon Brown yesterday sought to appease angry protests by hauliers, farmers and motorists with a £2bn package of cuts in road taxes and fuel.

The self-styled people's fuel lobby said it planned to go ahead with its march on London, but Mr Brown's efforts to head off an early resumption of September's protests clearly drove a wedge among the drivers' ranks, with renewed pressure on them to call off their campaign.

The chancellor appeared to have bought the government a significant breathing space with his pre-Budget package that would cut hauliers' costs by the equivalent of 8p a litre and those of motorists by 4p from March.

Mr Brown, who froze fuel duty last year, said the freeze would continue in his next Budget - against an inflation-driven 1.5p rise - and for a further year if oil prices remained high. The freeze applies to the "red" diesel used by farmers.

The duty on ultra low sulphur petrol will be cut by a further 2p a litre in the next budget, bringing the total to 3p - with the same cut now to be made in the same form of diesel. There will be a 2p cut in duty on lead replacement petrol in this £1bn package.

Drivers of cars such as the Ford Escort, VW Polo and Honda Civic will pay £100 for their annual road tax compared with the current £155. The chancellor extended the lower duty to cars between 1200cc and 1500cc.

Mr Brown hopes that these measures will peel off motorists from hauliers, who initially wanted a 26.2p cut in the price of a litre of diesel.

Several leading protesters among the hauliers who blockaded oil refineries in September dismissed the concessions as mere tokens, while others welcomed them or said they needed more time to consider a complex package.

David Handley, chairman of the people's fuel lobby, which led the revolt in September, said the planned day of disruption would go ahead. "We will be in London on the 14th. The protest goes ahead ... by the time this gets implemented we will go out of business."

Even the official lobbies, the road hauliers association and the freight transport association, split apart, with the RHA saying it needed instant relief and the FTA acknowledging that the government had listened to its pleas.

Mr Brown set out a £750m package for hauliers which included a 50% cut in vehicle excise duty for lorries worth up to £4,000 for each vehicle and the reduction of the current 100 rates or bands to just seven from his March budget.

The chancellor said this would cost £300m a year while it would cost an extra £265m to rebate vehicle excise duty fees for this financial year, with full payments due by the end of January.

But he made plain these were consultative proposals which would, if implemented, save the owners of 250,000 lorries £2,000 and an average £1,750 per trucker for the whole industry. The package, Mr Brown claims, is worth 3p a litre or the level of the cut in duty promised by the opposition.

The chancellor held out the prospect of a "Britidisc" or vignette for foreign hauliers using UK roads to pay towards the upkeep of the country's roads - from which British truckers would be exempt.

But ministers said the new scheme could not be implemented before 2002 and would require careful consultation with the European commission. They also left unsaid how much the vignette - widely estimated at £1,000 to £1,500 - would cost.

The government also offered a £100m "ring-fenced" fund to encourage hauliers to switch to newer, cleaner lorries - a "scrappage" allowance to help the owner-drivers adapt to computerised logistics and make them more competitive.